Meet the Class of 2014: our 12 Fellows who joined School of Data from across five continents, carrying out their fellowship from July-December 2014.

Antonio Cucho Gamboa, Peru

Antonio is a PHP and Python programmer, Co-organizer of Hacks & Hackers Lima and among the founders of the Open Data community in Peru. He is an active participant in projects around both open data and data journalism. In July 2013 he took part in AbreLatam in Montevideo, Uruguay with the award winning project Lima I/O. In February 2014 he organized Open Data Day Peru, which featured workshops, a hackathon and talks about open data. In March 2014 he attended a Databootcamp for journalists in Montevideo, Uruguay. In his fellowship he will be teaching open data tools through workshops for journalists, citizens and NGO’s.

Codrina Illie

Codrina is a PhD Student at the Technical University of Civil Engineering, Bucharest working within the Groundwater Engineering Research Center “CCIAS”. She is actively promoting free and open source software for geospatial data and is a dynamic supporter of the open data movement in Romania through her work within the geo-spatial.org community. Codrina is part of the GEodata Openness Initiative for Development and Economic Advancement in ROmania project team, where she works to improve the scientific basis for open geodata model adoption in Romania. The project is built a the vision that publishing government geodata in Romania online under an open license and in a reusable format can strengthen citizen engagement, yield new innovative businesses, bringing substantial social and economic gains. You can follow her on twitter at @CodrinaI.

Dona Djambaska, Macedonia
Dona graduated in the field of Environmental Engineering and has been working with Metamorphosis foundation in Skopje for the past 6 years assisting on projects in the field of information society. At Metamorphosis she has focused on organising trainings for computer skills, social media, online promotion, photo and video activism. Dona is also an active contributor and member of the Global Voices Online community. She dedicates her spare time to artistic and activism photography.

Hannah Williams, South Africa
Hannah is a graphic designer working in both web and print. She occasionally does copy writing and have worked on a couple of public art projects. Recently she she has focused more on doing work with a positive social impact. You can find some of her work at: http://www.hannahwilliams.co.za

Happy Feraren, the Philippines
Happy Feraren is the co-founder and CEO of Bantay.ph – a Manila based civil society organization (CSO) that monitors the quality of service delivery provided by frontline government offices through volunteer reporting. Along with the rest of her team, Bantay.ph has engaged over 100 student volunteers to monitor their local government offices and to check for compliance of service standards mandated by the law. Bantay.ph aims to uplift the standard of public service and create a culture of active citizenship. Happy finished a degree in Literature at the De La Salle University, Manila before pursuing a career in advertising. After 4 years in the industry, she decided to leave advertising to work full time in the development sector. She is also a member of Manila’s premiere improvisational theater group, SPIT (Silly People’s Improv Theater). As a member of the group, she has performed at international improv festivals, conducted training modules for corporations, and developed special immersive theater shows. She also has diverse local and international experience in the fields of education, tourism, broadcasting, and HR training.

Joachim Mangilima, Tanzania
Joachim Mangilima is a technology and data enthusiast with a passion for using technology and data in addressing the most common problems facing communities around the world. He is active as a consultant in the field of development, ICT deployment and management of mobile and web-based solutions as well as systems for decision support, data collection, analysis and management. Joachim is also the Co-founder and Co-manager of Google Developer Group (GDG), Dar es Salaam, a group of technology enthusiasts and software developers who are interested in open source technology with a bias in Google’s developer technology; this includes everything from the Android, App Engine, and Google Chrome platforms, to product APIs like the Maps API, YouTube API and Google Calendar API. Joachim holds a Bachelor of Science degree from University of Dar es Salaam majoring in Computer Science and Statistics with a minor in Economics.

Nisha Thompson, India
Nisha is currently working as Lead Organizer of a new organization called DataMeet, which is a community of people working towards open data by sharing experiences and helping others with data related problems. Datameet is hosting meetups and Open Data Camps around the India to promote dialogue about the use of data for civic purposes. Nisha moved to India in 2010 and worked with the India Water Portal to open up water data and worked with partners on the ground to improve the use and management of data. She also co-wrote a report on Open Government Data in India with the Centre for Internet and Society located in Bangalore. Previously she has worked with the Sunlight Foundation, in the United States, as social media and community organizer.

Oludotun Babayemi, Nigeria
Oludotun Babayemi has 5 years experience in the nonprofit sector and a Masters degree in Information Management. He is a Monitoring and Evaluation Expert with Connected Development [CODE], and the Lead Development Consultant with Cloneshouse Nigeria. He is a Microsoft Certified Information Technology Professional and presently a USAID and Google sponsored CrisisMapper Fellow. Oludotun is working on monitoring and evaluation systems (such as the Follow The Money and the Education Budget Tracker) that can be used to put pressure on governments and organizations in developing countries to be more responsive to demands from internal and external stakeholders for good governance, accountability and transparency, greater development effectiveness and delivery of tangible results. He has worked in participatory mapping projects with UNOCHA during the Libya Crisis, UNOSAT in the Post Libya Crisis Map, WHO in the health facility registry post-Libya Crisis, Amnesty International-US during the Syria Uprising, UNSPIDER in the Samoa Simulation Exercise, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative Simulation Exercise and also with USAID on the mapping of poverty alleviation projects around the world. He was the Geo-Team Lead with Humanity Road using his expertise in information communications in disasters and humanitarian relief support. You can follow Oludotun on twitter: @dotunbabayemi.

Rita Zágoni, Hungary
Rita Zágoni is a programmer with a social science background. She has worked in IT management and web development before joining the Economics department of Central European University, where she is in charge of parsing unstructured, free text data to create analyzable data formats. Wandering across the fields of data she has gained experience in web development, text processing and statistics using mainly Python, Java and MySQL.

Ruben Moya, Mexico
Ruben studied computer science at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara (UDG). He is currently building web applications. He is an avid follower of technology and love to see new places. During the past months he has given lectures on code optimization, and taught basic and advanced programming and web development. He also manages the programming of online conferences (hangouts) and online courses on various topics of technology, development and design.

Siyabonga Africa, South Africa
Siyabonga is from the east coast of South Africa but currently living in Gauteng while working as a data visualization lead developer at Apehllion. His career has its roots in public administration and journalism from the University of Pretoria and Stellenbosch University respectively. He completed his master in new media design at Indiana University before returning to South Africa in 2012.

Yuandra Ismiraldi, Indonesia
Yuandra is a full stack mobile engineer and game developer from Indonesia. He holds a bachelor and master degree in software engineering, and started his career working with several startups in the mobile and gaming space. He became interested in open data after participating in a hackathon about open data. Yuandra is excited about the field of open data and therefore currently expanding his skill set on information technology tools which can help him in his work on open data.

Delivery partners
The Fellowship Programme is developed and delivered with Code for Africa, Social-Tic (Mexico) and Publish What You Pay Indonesia.

Funding partners
The School of Data Fellowship is made possible thanks to the generous support from the World Bank through the Partnership for Open Data, Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO), Hivos, Indigo Trust, Southeast Asia Technology and Transparency Initiative (SEATTI), The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Open Society Foundations.